Tourism rift grows deeper

As the infighting over the direction of county tourism wages on, businesses trying to survive in an under-performing market are left suffering the consequences.

JEFFREY CASSADYBUSINESS WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH — The longstanding disunity among Volusia County's tourism leaders was on full display last week as County Council members disagreed sharply over the Ocean Center's future.The next day, Councilman Josh Wagner suggested the situation will resolve itself when the old guard dies off. "Honestly, we need about 10 funerals, and then things will change," Wagner said Friday, referring to some longtime hotel owners and their supporters. "Time is slowly going to correct this on its own." Wagner was on the losing end of a 4-3 vote Thursday to ask the tourism authority to give more bed-tax money to the Ocean Center's county staff for marketing and booking conventions. Wagner, along with Chair Jason Davis and Vice-Chair Joyce Cusack, wanted to follow a tourism report's recommendation and get the Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau working side by side with the Ocean Center staff on attracting more conventions. As the infighting over the direction of county tourism wages on, businesses trying to survive in an under-performing market are left suffering the consequences and wondering when it will end. "We're languishing in some type of purgatory," said Paul Politis, president of Gator Beach & Sport gift shop on State Road A1A in Daytona Beach. "I'm too small to make my opinions heard. So, I'm just waiting here for someone to come along with a plan." The recently completed $100,000 tourism study was supposed to provide that plan, but implementing the report's recommendations has itself proven contentious, as last week showed. The divisions in Volusia County are multiple: The west side versus Southeast Volusia versus the Halifax area; those who want to market primarily to traditional vacationers versus those who want to go after large meetings and conventions; established hoteliers and industry watchers versus newcomers. "There's an incredible void of leadership," Politis said. "If you ask 20 so-called tourism experts, you'll get 20 different answers on where we should go. All those opinions get muddled in the conversation." Regardless, the bickering has to stop for the good of the county, said Dan Francati, president of the Daytona Beach Kennel Club and member of the Halifax Area Advertising Authority board of directors. "It was good theater for a while there," Francati said, referring to last week's dust-up at the County Council meeting. "But we need to put this behind us, stop the infighting and move forward." The problem stems from several parties — the Ocean Center, visitors bureau and the county's three tourism advertising authorities, among others— pursuing their own interests instead of what's best for the destination and county as a whole, said Sean Belgrade, Halifax tourism ad authority board member and the vice president of marketing for Daytona International Speedway. "It's like we operate in silos," Belgrade said. "It's difficult to be successful overall. People are way too protective of their areas, and that's not helping the whole."

THE OCEAN CENTER'S FUTURE

Belgrade is not a fan of the County Council's recommendation to divert up to a quarter of the visitors bureau's approximately $6 million budget — and possibly some of its personnel — to the Ocean Center. Councilman Doug Daniels made the motion and the council approved that plan Thursday in a contentious 4-3 vote. Belgrade said he is "still flabbergasted" by the vote and plans to oppose the request when it is put before the ad authority board. The visitors bureau currently devotes money and manpower to attracting meetings and conventions to the area. Francati said he wants to review how effective the visitors bureau's efforts have been before he makes a decision on giving funding to the Ocean Center. In addition to being asked for funding for the Ocean Center, the ad authority will be given the option to allow some visitors bureau sales members to join the Ocean Center's sales team, Daniels said on Friday. He argued the visitors bureau has been ineffective in attracting Ocean Center business and the money would be better spent at the Ocean Center directly. The visitors bureau's chief disagrees. "This would be a catastrophe for the destination," said Jeffrey Hentz, the visitors bureau's president and CEO, adding he thinks the board will oppose diverting the funds. "Losing that much money out of our budget would remove us from competing on the advertising level, and we'd still need people to sell the rest of the meeting space (outside the Ocean Center) in town. I'd have to hire another team to do that." Hentz said he would support the original recommendation made in the tourism study, which was authored by Dan Fenton of Duluth, Ga.-based Strategic Advisory Group. The study suggested combining the Ocean Center's sales staff with some of the visitors bureau staff, with the unified staff answering to both Ocean Center director Don Poor and Hentz. "There seems to be a true lack of wanting to cooperate, and I haven't seen anything on this level before," said Hentz, who served as director of Destination Yosemite and the Mariposa (Calif.) Convention and Visitors Bureau before taking the reins in Daytona Beach last summer. "The reluctance to work with us at the (visitors bureau) goes back well before my arrival. I'm trying to unravel this, and it's like a 10-year-old feud. I had no idea it went back that far."

TOURISM LEADERSHIP'S FUTURE

Regardless of how the ad authority board votes when it considers the request, the Daytona Beach area will stay far from consensus on tourism issues until a rift between some older, established hoteliers, industry watchers and community members and their younger counterparts is closed, Wagner said on Friday. Like Wagner, Davis was set against asking the Halifax ad authority to give money to the Ocean Center, calling it a "ridiculous notion" and a "monetary shell and pea game" that would undermine the authority's own advertising campaigns. Even after the council's vote, the dissenting Davis was still pushing for a merger of the visitors bureau and the Ocean Center — at least for a two-year trial period, he said, because the current structure isn't working. Despite the sharp disagreement over the Ocean Center, the county's top executive says county officials and tourism leaders are more or less on the same page and that any disagreements they have are healthy, not a harmful turf war or clash of personalities. "You have different people with different perspectives because they have different investments," said County Manager Jim Dinneen. "I think that's pretty normal in human beings and healthy. You're going to have differences of opinion in a democracy." Dinneen added that the county approved most of the recommendations made by the study. He contends there's disagreement over the Ocean Center because the facility recently underwent an approximately $82 million renovation that greatly expanded the range of events it can accommodate. "Stakes are bigger now," he said. "This is all new, and I think that there are growing pains anytime you have something new like that." Likewise, Daniels said he doesn't think the differences of opinion run particularly deep. "If, three years ago, the county had gone to the (Halifax ad authority) board and asked for additional funds to market the Ocean Center, I think we would have gotten it," he said, adding he thinks the current ad authority will support the request. "It's a lot of nervousness about nothing. It's something that can be worked out simply to everyone's satisfaction. Even Sean Belgrade will think it's a good idea."